Let me weep
My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone,
In tears which burn! Would I were sure to win
Some startling secret in their stead, a tincture
Of force to flush old age with youth, or breed
Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they change
To opal shafts! - only that hurling it
Indignant back, I might convince myself
My aims remained supreme and pure as ever.

- Browning, Paracelsus.

The immediate result of the Commissioners' visit to Mortlake was
a gift of a hundred marks from the Queen. The Countess of Warwick
sent off "her gentleman, Mr. Jones, very speedily,"
to tell Dee that Sir Thomas Gorges "had very honorably dealt
for" him in the matter, and that the gift was granted. The
money was brought next day (December 2) by Sir Thomas himself.
He brought also a letter "full of courtesie and kindness
and a token of six old angells of gold," from Lady Howard
to Jane. Dee seems to have become intimate with Lady Warwick through
his early friendship with John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who died,
aged twenty-four, in 1554. In his Preface to Euclid, Dee has left
an etched portrait of his own age. "No two besides himself,"
says Dee, "can so well say what roots vertue had fastened
in his breat, what rules of godly and honorable life he had framed
to himself, what vices noteable he took great care to eschew,
what prowesses he purposed and meant to achieve."

Dee's "few lynes of thankfulness" to the Queen for her
gift were probably written at once, but only delivered by Lady
Warwick on February 15, at Hampton Court, on the eve of a move
to Somerset House.

On the strength of this dole, Dee was able to settle some pressing
debts, and to hire a coach and go off with his wife and Arthur
and Kate, to spend Christmas and New Year's Day at Tooting, "at
Mr. R. Luresey his howse." The Lord Treasurer, he reports,
lay dangerously sick at the time. On the 2nd they returned. On
the 7th, welcome letters, perhaps containing money, arrived from
Count Laski in Livonia, to which Dee replied on the 20th, sending
his letter by a Danish ship called the John of Dansk.

His reputation as an astronomer and mathematician now procured
for Dee a pupil, from whom he was to receive in exchange a considerable
gift or loan.

"March 17, 1593. At six after none received from Mr. Francis
Nicholls £15, part of one hundred pounds, the rest whereof,
£85, is to be receyved from Mr. Nicholls within a fortnight
after the annunciation of Our Lady next; and after that in the
beginning of June £100, and in Julie the third hundred pownds,
and I am to teach him the conclusion of fixing and teyming of
the moon."

A rather unwise purchase seems to have been made this may; Dee
bought the "next mansion house, with the plat and all the
appertenances abowt it," of Mr. Mark Pierpoint, of Mortlake.
It is true the whole mansion only cost £32, but it entailed
other purchases and soon had to be mortgaged. Possession was not
obtained till the autumn. A "hovel" in the yard was
bought from Goodman Welder in July for a new angel and five new
shillings. The bargain with Pierpoint was concluded in the street,
when "before Jane my wife, I gave him a saffron noble in
ernest for a drink penney."